HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 
most terrible slaughters of men that had ever disgraced 
history; and it seemed as if that frightful lavishness of | 
the irrecoverable good, which is life, had given him a 
respect for ald life, an insurmountable aversion to all 
destruction. 
“This had in time arrived at such an extreme, that 
he would have willingly lived upon vegetable food alone. 
He would have no viands of blood; they excited his 
horror. A morsel of chicken, or, more often, an egg 
or two, served for his dinner. And frequently he 
dined standing. 
“Such a regimen, however, could not strengthen 
him. Nor did he economize his strength, expending it 
largely in lessons, in conversations, and in the habitual 
overflow of a too benevolent heart, which lived in all 
things, interested itself in all) Age came, and with 
. it anxieties: family anxieties? no, but from jealous 
neighbours or unfaithful debtors. The crisis of the 
American banks dealt a severe blow to his fortune. 
He came to the extreme resolution, in spite of his ill 
health and his years, of once more visiting America, in 
the belief that his personal activity and his industry 
might re-establish affairs, and secure the fortune of 
his wife and children. 
“This departure was terrible. It was preceded for 
me by another blow. I had quitted the mansion and the 
country; I had entered a boarding-school in the town. 
Cruel servitude, which deprived me of all that made 
my life—of air and respiration! Everywhere, walls! 
I should have died, but for the frequent visits of my 
mother, and the rarer visits of my father, to which I 
